Hi Scott and Erin
Scott wrote (20 June)
> Hi Bo,
> I too have been offline for a while, about a month in fact, thanks first
> to a finicky ISP and then moving. I've been looking at the archives, but
> can't resist posting before I'm done, so bear with me.
Yes, a month is an eternity in an Internet discussion context, I have started to forget who
was who, but I faintly recall that you and I have been in agreement before.
> Mostly I'm responding to your P.S.:
> > DMB invited us to investigate the emergence of SOM - or something to
> > that effect. Platt responded, but all this disappeared in the collapse
> > of my machine and finding it in the archives isn't easy. What thread was
> > that?
> A while back I mentioned a book that, if I could only persuade everyone
> on this list to read, I would think my life's work to be done (not
> really :). It is Owen Barfield's "Saving the Appearances: A Study in
> Idolatry". It addresses exactly this question, and gives a very
> interesting answer to it. Briefly, he claims (as Julian Jaynes did later
> in The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind) that prior to the post-Homeric
> Greeks, there wasn't an intellectual level. There was language, and
> there was something related to thinking, but the latter was
> qualitatively different from what we call thinking. By studying Homer,
> and other sources, he finds no understanding that thinking is something
> "I" do. Rather, it was more like voices from outside.
Before commenting this a short note to Erin's recommendation of another writer who says
this
> > Characteristics of mammal consciousness are warmth, generosity,
> > loyalty love, joy, grief, humor, pride, competition, intellectual
> > curiousity, and appriciation of art and music. In late mammalian times we
I acknowledge everything about the various brain layers, but "mammal consciousness" as
representing ...warmth, intellectual curiosity, appreciation of art .. etc. Rats and mice are also
mammals if my memory serves me. Can't we try to find writers with some sense left?
Over to Scott who continued:
> Even more interesting is that perception was also different. From
> anthropological work, he finds a consistent pattern of perception being
> more than what it is for us. For us, it is something like "seeing a tree
> is seeing form and color", but in earlier times it was more like seeing
> the outer form AND the spiritual tree "behind" it.
Yes, but I think the "form" vs "the spiritual" thing behind is SOM-Intellect casting the past in
its own picture. The reality of our ancestors was not divided in any way and could be
created/manipulated by correctly performed rituals. But I guess this is exactly what you
mean.
> In other words "mythical" thinking was not a matter of ignorant people
> experiencing what we do and then explaining it with silly ideas of gods,
> but an accurate description of what WAS EXPERIENCED.
Agree! In a MOQ context this was the Social reality (experience). As real as the biological
and the inorganic experiences .... yet, not as valuable as the Intellectual experience, but -
again- intellect dominates our outlook and forces us to look upon the past as "ignorant".
> The story goes on. The post-tHomeric Greeks were the first to "think
> about" things. However, it was only a gradual process before the
> thinking came to be completely experienced as "my" thinking, only
> completed around 500 years ago, and which made the scientific revolution
> possible, and lo SOM (Descartes) was born. Barfield's point is that SOM
> -- the clear separation of the subject from the object wasn't possible
> until this evolution of consciousness occurred.l
OK, "think about" means a subject who regards an objective reality ...from a distance ...
which is what Q-intellect is all about. And of course it was gradual, yet I think what is
described in ZAMM is the birth of the SOM (its conception around Homer's time) and
Descartes meant it's "coming of age" ...and WW1 it's "take-over" of western civilization.
> And, of course, consciousness will continue to involve, with the next
> development being the re-merging of the subject and object worlds, ie,
> what we now call mystical transcendence of SO dualism.
Oh, here it is - the dreadful CONSCIOUSNESS term. It is loaded to the plimsoll mark with
SOM and means a lot more than conscious versus unconscious. As said before, all
creatures sleep and must necessarily wake up to some reality different from sleep, no, when
we utter this word we really mean "awareness" and the way you speak it's synonymous with
DQ ...whose next development will be "...the re-merging of the subject and object worlds". I
agree but not in the sense that subject and object is "merged". The S/O divide is terrible
valuable - it is intellect itself - but it will be the overlaid by a new value layer. Again I believe
that this is what you say, it's only from intellect p.o.v. it's called "mystical"
> My own take on all this with respect to "defining the intellectual
> level" is that it doesn't fully exist yet. The closest we come is with
> mathematics, where there is no object. Instead the thinking is the
> mathematics -- there are no mathematical objects being thought about.
> (This requires more detail, but another time). I might also add (with
> respect to the question of feeling and intellect) is that now mostly
> feeling is a matter of reaction. When the intellectual level come into
> its own, then it carries its own feeling, that is feeling and thinking
> merge -- again the closest I can guess at might be the aesthetic
> pleasure of doing mathematics, though perhaps music is another case.
Here we differ. Intellect/SOM is developed do the degree of dominating our outlook
completely, making it so hard to understand the MOQ - which is a development out of
intellect. Mathematics the intellectual epitome! Weren't ancient man capable of calculating,
maybe not in the algebraic way, and what is math except an advanced calculation with ever
more abstract quantities? No that is not Q-Intellect. Archimedes and the number
(geometrical figures) mystics weren't intimate part of the Socrates/Plato/Aristotle movement.
Sorry for sounding so cock-sure, but here in the last paragraph you veer off into the usual
blind alley of equating "thinking" - as such - with the Q-intellect. Thinking OBJECTIVELY is
Q-intellect. Thinking EMOTIONALLY is Q-society and thinking SENSUALLY is Q-biology.
Bo
PS
Tomorrow we (wife and I) start on a summer vacation car trip, and if I don't find a telephone
connection somewhere - or an Internet cafe - I will probably be absent for some time. But
keep posting.
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:20 BST